Re: question from an American
Posted by: Anonymous User (---.dialup.optusnet.com.au)
Date: March 25, 2005 11:18AM
phoenixAsh wrote thusly:
"In order to take over the world, they would have to be worldwide, right? So what is News Corp? Because it's not over here in the States, or at least it's not that popular."
News Corp *is* in the US, having owned and/or controlled studios such as 20th Century Fox and its associated television networks, at least one US satellite TV broadcaster, one large publishing house (HarperCollins) and populist newspapers such as the "New York Post". They also have substantial media holdings in Asia, Australasia (where the company was formed in the 1960s) and Europe (where, amongst other titles, News Corp own three London mastheads -- "News of the World", "The Sun" and "The Times").
But News Corp, Starbucks, WalMart and others mentioned here are IMHO too narrow in focus to be an equivalent for "Goliath". My bet would be that it's an amalgam of companies such as GE (which is a major media owner (NBC) as well as a major aircraft, shipbuilding and armaments manufacturer) and massive mercantile concerns of the past such as the Dutch East India Company, the British East India Company and the Hanseatic League (each of which were private corporations that maintained their own colonial empires and military forces and were effectively superpowers in their own right).